COVID-19: Unite & Fight!
As COVID-19 hits Canada, the government has closed the borders, shut down gathering places like libraries and community centres, and has called for people to stay home. But what about people who can only wash their hands in libraries? Who sleep within breathing distance of others on shelter mats? Who line up and eat in soup kitchens? Who already have compromised immune systems? Poor Indigenous and working class communities will only survive COVID-19 if we fight back together! In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Red Braid is supporting poor and homeless communities across the Lower Mainland to #SQUAT2SURVIVE.
Breaking: Stewart Squat launches in Vancouver’s DTES!
On April 17, homeless and underhoused residents of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside took over a vacant school building, launching the latest #SQUAT2SURVIVE action: the Kennedy Stewart Squat!
COVID-19 is gender violence and the Hothouse Squat is a safer space
Homeless and low-income women have established a wing in the Hothouse Squat as a space for women’s community, solidarity, and collective struggle against patriarchal power and violence, which has increased during the COVID-19 crisis.
COVID-19 + Colonization = Death
To survive COVID-19, we have to protect Indigenous spaces. We have to protect our physical spaces where we can see and care for each other. We have to defend all our relations against being controlled by building managers, surveilled by police, and killed by colonizer violence.
Hothouse Squat Founding Declaration
#SQUAT2SURVIVE COVID-19! Unhoused and underhoused communities seize the vacant North Surrey Recreation Centre in Surrey Centre to create and fight for homes safer than the streets, shelters, and modular housing that are becoming COVID-19 hothouses
Breaking: Hothouse Squat launches in Surrey Centre!
On April 1st, homeless activists launched the Hothouse Squat. They call for for poor and homeless communities all over the province to take over vacant buildings as part of the #SQUAT2SURVIVE movement, in an act of militant self-defense from COVID-19.
#Squat2Survive! Homeless communities organize to escape COVID-19 hothouses
You can't self-isolate in shelters, SROs, modular housing, or on the streets. By taking over vacant buildings, we can immediately shelter ourselves from the many threats of poverty – of which COVID-19 is just one. Support poor and homeless communities to #Squat2Survive!